According to a recent report out of the University of British Columbia, there may be a link between antibiotic exposure during the first year of life and the risk of developing asthma later in childhood. The study, which was based on a sample of 12,082 kids and 1,817 documented cases of asthma, suggested that the likelihood of developing asthma doubled in children who had received antibiotics during the first year of life, and may increase by a factor of 1.16 with each additional round of antibiotics. That being said, the authors were unable to rule out ‘reverse causation’ in which a predisposition for asthma is accompanied by more frequent respiratory tract infections, and thus more frequent use of antibiotics.